The innovation relates to a tachograph having a shallow, installable housing, having a display apparatus and having provision for inserting and removing driver""s data cards from the front side, having buttons for operational control and for retrieving memory contents in the tachograph and having a printing apparatus which records on tape-like recording material, comprises a thermal print head, a transport roller which is actively connected, with a force fit, to the thermal print head, with the recording material located in between, and is driven by a drive, and a holder which stores a roll of tape forming the stock of recording material, and which can be moved out from the front side of the housing of the tachograph in order to reload a roll of tape.
In the case of such a unit design, there is just a narrow side of the housing, forming the front side of the tachograph, available for looking at the display apparatus, for accessing the read and write units associated with the driver data cards, for operating the buttons and for handling the printing apparatus. In addition, a clearly readable display (and hence one which is as large as possible) and also buttons whose operation is unambiguous and possibly does not require them to be looked at directly are necessary at a tachograph""s installation location, which is not always adequately illuminated, in other words at the workplace of a bus driver or lorry driver. Furthermore, it is expedient to associate sufficiently large recesses, serving as an aid to insertion, with the read/write units"" insertion/output openings, so that the front face of the printing apparatus, which can be moved out from the front side of the tachograph, has only a relatively limited surface area available on which sufficiently easy-to-handle means for operating the printing apparatus, possibly closure means as well, an outlet opening for the printed recording material, and also buttons have to be arranged. This means that, when the front face of the tachograph has been provided with the aforementioned operating elements and inlet openings, the remaining scope for designing the front side of the tachograph, particularly the front side of the printing apparatus, is severely limited.
The object of the present innovation was therefore to improve the design options on the front side of a tachograph of this generic type without impairing any operations of the tachograph.
Claim 1 describes how the object is achieved. Further advantageous refinements to the innovation can be found in the dependent claims.
The crucial advantage of the innovation can be seen, in particular, in that the front face of the printing apparatus can be designed without regard for the outlet opening. This means that, by way of example, there is a relatively large degree of freedom for the arrangement and design of handle elements, specifically of relatively large handle elements, that handle elements can be arranged so that they can be recessed/swung out, and/or locking means can be provided.
A further fundamental advantage can be seen in that the closure gap, which is present anyway, between the printing apparatus or the printing mechanism housing and the front wall of the tachograph is jointly used for outputting printed recording material, and hence also the risk of soiling is reduced by comparison with an outlet opening usually provided in addition to the closure gap.
The innovation also has the advantage that the physical height of the printing apparatus is determined solely by the diameter of the roll of tape, and hence the physical height can be reduced to this diameter. Apart from simplifying production of the printing mechanism housing by using injection molding technology, it is also advantageous that the cover, by forming a wall of the output channel, permits direct access to the output channel and makes it possible to clear a paper jam in the outlet region of the printing apparatus. For the rest, despite the outlet opening""s position provided in accordance with the innovation, the measure of feeding the recording material to the printing mechanism on the opposite side from the front face of the printing mechanism housing affords the possibility of guiding the recording material so that it is largely stretched, and hence of improved transport conditions inside the printing mechanism housing, which prevent jamming.
In the context of the printing apparatus being designed such that the printing mechanism housing is articulated on the carriage and the inlet opening is situated on the other side of the end wall of the printing mechanism housing, handling when threading the recording material into the printing mechanism is trouble-free in a great number of installation positions for the tachograph. When doing this, it is possible to look at the inlet opening and the outlet opening at the same time.